Pesticide use is a necessity to ensure high crop yields, which poses a threat to managed honey bee (<i>Apis m.</i>) colonies. Pollinator protection plans require strategies to reduce the interaction time, or short-term deterrence, of foraging bees with pesticide-treated crops. Repellent chemistries are one approach to deter foraging bees from the unintentional exposure to pesticides. We have screened a series of heterocyclic amines (HCA) for their ability to reduce food source interaction time as a prerequisite for field experiments with the same chemistries. A video tracking protocol was developed to evaluate the time bees spent in a feeding zone treated with HCAs. The HCAs piperidine and pyrrole (1% v/v) significantly reduced the time spent in the feeding zone by 85-94% whereas pyrrolidine and piperazine (1% v/v) decreased the time spent in the feeding zone by 49-52% compared to the feeding zones without HCA treatment. Next, we examined the efficacy of the HCAs using high-tunnel and field crop experiments. Piperidine treatment (1% v/v) to a sugar feeder station as well as melon flower and knapweed plots significantly reduced bee visitation and recruitment to these treated food sources compared to the sources without HCA treatment. Finally, we recorded the olfactory response of bee antennae to the HCAs using an electroantennogram (EAG). The EAG recordings show a significant olfactory response to HCAs at 10% (v/v) and above, but no response was detected at field-tested concentrations. These results suggest an alternative mode of detection for the HCAs, which will be discussed in the context of using chemical interventions for pollinator-pesticide protection.

Chemical interventions to reduce honey bee interaction with food sources

254th National Meeting (2017)

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